


Promises

by like_a_raven



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen, It's a Lot Less Cracky Than It Sounds, Semi-Canon Compliant, Severus Snape as Guitar God
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-18
Updated: 2012-04-18
Packaged: 2017-11-03 20:45:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/like_a_raven/pseuds/like_a_raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there's one thing rock and roll loves, it's a bad boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promises

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks are due to three extraordinary betas -- mountain_born, lazy_neutrino, and varadia. This is all Joan's fault. Well, Joan's and Eric Clapton's.

We made a vow, we'd always be friends.  
How could we know that promises end?

**Summer 1983**

The flat is dim, dingy, and downright depressing.

Tobias Snape's landlady had found him dead here a week ago. He'd moved in around the time his only son had left Hogwarts, five years ago, but this is Severus's first and last visit to his father's penultimate resting place.

Whatever dream Tobias had been chasing, it's hard to believe he'd found it here. Or maybe he hadn't been chasing anything. Maybe he'd just been running away.

There's almost nothing of value in the flat – a watch Severus remembers seeing his father wearing, a bracelet he doesn't recognize, about a hundred pounds hidden in the back of a drawer, and a guitar, propped up against the wall in one corner.

Everything else is rubbish, figuratively or literally, useless odds and ends piled up along the walls, cheap secondhand clothes in the wardrobe. Severus takes the cash and what little looks like it might be worth selling – the watch, the bracelet, the guitar. He could certainly use the money. He tells the landlady she can do as she pleases with the rest and leaves over her objections that _he's_ meant to be the one cleaning up after his useless father.

His own flat isn't much of an improvement on his father's. He supposes he has no one to blame but himself for that. He could be living quite comfortably, but he had turned down Dumbledore's offer of a position at Hogwarts two years ago. When the boy arrives there, when there's actually some _need_ for him to be protected, things will be different. But for now, Severus would prefer not to be beholden to Albus Dumbledore any more than he already is.

He's had enough bowing and scraping, really.

But pride doesn't pay bills, and work is hard to find, especially when you're known to have been a Death Eater and won't pretend otherwise.

He knows better than to try to sell Muggle stuff in a Wizard shop. With his reputation, it will lead to unpleasant questions. Besides, it's far easier to Confund a Muggle shopkeeper into paying twice what the watch is worth than it would be with a wizard who is expecting it.

The goblins at Gringotts don't care how or where he came by the Muggle money he exchanges for Galleons, as long as it's real.

A few weeks later, he sells the bracelet, too. It's worth more than the watch, even before he employs his own means of "negotiation." He doesn't know whom his father got it for – or from – nor does he care. It pays the rent.

**1983 – 1986**

He plans to sell the guitar as well. His father's possession of it is even more puzzling than that of the bracelet, but Severus is not interested in his father's mysteries, only the money he can make from them.

Instead, one evening, he finds himself picking idly at its strings. He doesn't have any particular goal in mind, no plan to learn to play properly. It's just something to do instead of staring at the walls of his little flat, watching the mold creep down next to the dirty window where the rain comes in because he can't be bothered to stop it.

He does it again the next evening.

And the next.

After a week, he visits Flourish and Blotts and loiters in the music section, skimming books he can't afford to buy until he finds a self-tuning Charm. He scowls at the shop girl who tries to help him, twice. As a result, he has to memorize the Charm quickly when the manager comes over and suggests that if he's not planning to make a purchase, perhaps he should be on his way.

That night, he manages to turn the guitar a deep, almost luminescent shade of mauve. And since it's not anything he meant to do, he can't figure out how to undo it, either. 

His second trip to Flourish and Blotts is even shorter than the first, but he knows where to look now. He manages to spot the mistake he'd made – substituting a B for a D – before the manager runs him off again.

He goes to a Muggle shop for the book on teaching yourself to play the guitar, pays with a one-pound note he has charmed to look like a ten-pound note, and makes a few quid on the transaction.

The guitar becomes one of the few things he moves from one ever-more-dismal flat to the next. After a year goes by, he even stops telling himself he'll sell it soon.

Eventually he progresses from notes to chords to melodies. He picks out simple tunes, through trial and error, songs he remembers hearing when he was young. 

_Young._ He's twenty-four. In terms of numbers, he supposes he's still young, but it doesn't feel that way. His youth ended long ago, and he knows it. 

It takes him longer than it should to realize they're all songs he learned from _her_. There was never any music in his house when he was growing up. It was only either shouting or silence. 

Lily, though. Lily was music. She had been ever since the first time he saw her, humming something, twirling around and around with her arms flung out and her head thrown back.

She was always humming or singing when they were young. Half the time, he didn't even think she was aware of it; he'd ask her what the song was and she'd have to think about it before she answered.

Later, she'd had a Muggle wireless – a . . . radial, she'd called it. No, not _radial_. _Radio_. She'd had a _radio_ that she'd bring with her when they met by the river. It would play all summer long – songs about fire and rain, and a starry starry night, and a band on the run. The summer they were fourteen, she'd tried to teach him to dance, which had made him so nervous that his feet had only managed to find the movement equivalent of stammering, and she'd laughed and given up.

After fifth year, his life had gone back to silence and shouting. Death Eaters were not, after all, known for their dance parties.

No, Lily was music, and the songs he knows come from the seven years between the day he watched her twirl across the playground and the night she told him to save his breath.

Once he remembers that, he can't forget it. The songs he's been playing lose their appeal. The only other songs he knows are a jingle for Mrs. Scower's and the Hogwarts School Song, so he sets the guitar up against the wall and resolves, again, to sell it.

But he doesn't. Instead, he finds himself starting to play around with the strings and the notes until he finds his own tune. It's a short term solution, though. When he goes to put words to it, he finds that it's still all about her. It starts as an apology, but the longer he works with it, the more it changes, until it's all the things he had never found a way to make her hear when she was still alive. 

He calls it "Lilah." Because it's easier to sing than "Lily." 

Because he never says her name if he can help it.

**29 August 1986**

He's sitting in the floor one evening, because he doesn't have a chair in this latest flat in above a shop in Knockturn Alley. It's really only a room and hardly deserves the title of _flat_ , but it's what he can afford these days. He's playing "Lilah," trying to get the tempo right, when there's a knock at the door.

He's expecting his landlord, as the rent is two days late. Instead, he finds a tiny witch, maybe a few years older than he is, with a round face framed by short brown hair shot through with streaks of green. He's seen her once or twice, coming and going. She stands out, as she seems about as much like she belongs in Knockturn Alley as a rose garden would, even before she speaks and he discovers that her accent is decidedly American.

"Was that you playing? I could hear it across the hall."

"Was it bothering you?" he asks, without really caring about the answer.

"No, not at all. I thought you were good," she says. "You play pretty well."

Severus shrugs.

"Modesty," she says.

"Not really."

She laughs. "No, that's me. Modesty Moss."

"Severus Snape."

"Wow, and I thought 'Modesty Moss' was bad," she says. "Nice to meet you, Severus Snape. Can I come in?"

Modesty doesn't wait for an answer, but walks past him and into his flat.

"You're an American," he says, still standing in his own doorway.

"Yes. Well, half-American, technically," she says. "English father, American mother. I was born here, but Mom took me back home after they split up, and I grew up there. She was a singer – you've heard of Elsie Elwell?"

Severus shakes his head, fingers on the wand in his pocket, watching Modesty look around his room. 

"Well, you've heard of Celestina Warbeck, I'm sure. Celestina is Britain's version of Mom. Mom was a brilliant singer, but she had lousy taste in managers and worse taste in men. After she died last year, flat broke, I thought I'd look Dad up. Only he's Muggle, and he wasn't all that interested in reuniting with his witch of an ex-wife's witch of a daughter. So here I am." 

"In Knockturn Alley?"

"It's cheap. And it's temporary. I'm going places."

"How ambitious of you," Severus says, instead of pointing out that she could start by going some place that was not his flat. 

"I know, I'm very badly named, aren't I? So, let's hear it."

"Hear what?"

"Your song, of course. I want to hear what it sounds like when I'm not standing out in the hallway with my ear pressed to your door."

"You were listening outside my door?" Severus asks. "That's a good way to get yourself killed in Knockturn Alley."

"A person could try," Modesty says dismissively. "Come on, Severus Snape, let's hear it."

He's not sure why he doesn't say no. He's not sure why he hasn't ordered this woman out of his flat, for that matter. But Modesty has the air of a person who's not used to hearing the word _no_ , and anyway, it's been years since anyone expressed any interest in anything he was doing. So he sits down on the bed, picks up his still mauve guitar, and plays "Lilah" for her, never taking his eyes off her shoes.

"You're good," she says, when he's done. "You might even be great, or at least you have the potential to be. Nice voice. Distinctive. Rich. The song's good, too. Did you write it?"

Severus nods.

"I thought so," Modesty says, with a nod that almost looks like approval. "You sing it like you wrote it. You need to about double the tempo, but I like the melody. Who is she?"

"Who's who?" Severus asks, though he knows exactly what she means.

"The woman you wrote it for. Who is she?"

"Someone I used to know," Severus says shortly.

"Well, she made an impression, didn't she?" Modesty asks. She looks for a moment like she's going to continue this line of conversation, and then she says, "So when's your next gig?"

"Gig?"

"Yeah, you know. When are you playing? Where? Maybe I'll come."

Severus shakes his head. "I don't play 'gigs.'"

"Why not?"

He shrugs. "It's not anything I do for other people. I never intended for anyone to hear me."

"Liar," she says. "You wrote a song. You didn't scribble about this chick in your diary or even write poetry about her and lock it in a desk drawer. You wrote a song, then played and sang it."

"In the privacy of my own home."

"In a boarding house whose walls are so thin I can hear my neighbors _breathe_ , never mind sing, and you didn't even bother to cast a muffling spell. Say what you like, but you meant for someone to hear it. So go play it somewhere."

Severus considers this for a second, and then shakes his head. "I don't think it's wise."

"Why not? Like I said, you've got serious potential. I know music. I grew up watching singers try to be the next big thing. I could tell who actually stood a chance by the time I was ten. You'd stand a chance, a good one. I'd say you're already better than at least half of what we sell in the shop."

"Shop?"

"Kneedel and Tonearhm Records, 37 Diagon Alley. That's where I work. I know what people buy. And I could sell you. Easy."

"Even if I were interested, which I'm not, it would never work."

"Why not?" she says, repeating again what is apparently her favorite question.

For a moment, he just stares at her before he realizes. She's an American. She's only been here a year. She doesn't _know_. She didn't read about the trials in _The Daily Prophet_. She has no idea.

"I was a Death Eater."

Modesty cocks her head a little, looking him up and down with cool grey eyes. And then she smiles. "I can work with that." 

"You 'can work with that'?" he repeats. "Do you know what that means?"

"Of course. It means you were a follower of a Dark wizard called Voldemort, who for some reason, you people seem to think it's less scary to call He Who Must Not Be Named, like he's the boogeyman in the closet or something." She sweeps that same appraising glance over him. "Actually, forget selling you, I can make you a star."

"I can't even get a job stocking the shelves at the apothecary."

"Well, of course you can't. Nobody wants to buy beetles' eyes and dragon's blood from someone who tried to kill them. But this isn't potions, it's rock and roll. And if there's one thing rock and rolls loves, it's a bad boy. Besides, like you said, the world is not exactly beating a path to your door, just the crazy American girl across the hall. So tell me, Severus Snape, what exactly have you got to lose?"

Severus opens his mouth to say something, though he's not even sure if he's going to agree or object, and then closes it again without speaking.

"Look," Modesty says, heading for the door, "if you decide you're interested, come by the shop next Friday, right around closing time. Bring the guitar. See you then."

**5 September 1986**

Over the coming week, Severus decides he isn't interested a least twice a day. Then again, he apparently decides that he _is_ interested at least as often, or he wouldn't have to keep remaking the decision. 

Still, it's not until he actually picks up his mauve guitar and heads out the door on Friday evening that he will admit he really is going to see what the mad American girl across the hall has come up with.

"You're early," Modesty says, as he lets himself into Kneedel and Toneahrm. "I like that. Look around, I'll be with you in a bit."

Severus hasn't been in Diagon Alley's record shop in years. Lily had dragged him in here one summer, when they'd come down to London to do their Hogwarts shopping. It was after second year, maybe, or third.

She'd wound up back in the corner furthest from the door, looking at the small display of records by Muggle artists, sold as "special interest" music. She'd laughed, and told him that the prices were three times higher than they were in any shop on a Muggle high street.

He's idly flipping through the records in that corner himself when Modesty lets the last customer out of the shop and comes over to him. "Didn't have you pegged as a Muggle music fan. Most wizards aren't, you know. Especially former Death Eaters. You are a mystery, Severus Snape, aren't you? I can work with that, too. Come meet your band."

"My band?"

"Of course. You can't take the music world by storm all on your own," Modesty says. "At least not yet."

Severus follows her down a narrow flight of steps into a basement, through a door, down another flight of stairs full of sharp right-angle turns to a door labeled _Studio_. He might actually have been less nervous the first time he met the Dark Lord, and had to tell him that, yes, Muggle father and all, he dared to think that he could be a Death Eater. 

The door opens into a large white room, full of instruments (some of which Severus has no names for) and mismatched couches and chairs.

The four people gathered in the room all stop talking as he comes in. Severus recognizes exactly one of them – Gil Jordan, who'd been a year behind him at Hogwarts and a Gryffindor. From the way the other man's eyes narrow, Severus would guess that Gil remembers him, too.

"You're Severus Snape," says the young woman sitting on a ratty green couch. _Woman_ might actually be too generous a term for her; she looks barely old enough to have left Hogwarts. Her long hair is a color midway between purple and blue, and she shoves it back behind her shoulders as she stands. "I'm Aspasia Lynde. I was six years behind you in Slytherin."

"And she's a hell of an organist," Modesty says, when Severus has no response to the girl he doesn't recognize. "And this is Dougal McLaren, bagpipes," she says, of a broad-shouldered man with his long fair hair pulled back from his face. "Harmonia Lovegood, tambourine," is a woman with a dreamy look and eyepoppingly colorful robes. "And that leaves Gil Jordan – "

"Drums," Gil says. "We knew each other at Hogwarts."

Severus would consider it more accurate to say that knew _of_ each other at Hogwarts, but he merely nods.

"Great," Modesty says, in a bright tone that frankly doesn't suit her. "I'll leave you all to it, then."

"Leave us to what?" Severus asks.

"You know, talk. Jam. See if you think you're a good fit for each other. I'll be upstairs doing inventory, and I'll check on you in about an hour." 

Modesty lets herself back out of the room, closing the door behind her. Severus almost expects to hear her lock it. He turns his attention back to the others and wonders where she found them all. Maybe she makes a habit of listening outsides people's doors and then strong-arming them into bands.

Finally, just at the point when the silence goes from awkward to stifling, Dougal clears his throat. He's clearly the oldest person here, and in the absence of knowing what else to do, they all seem to be happy to defer to him. "So, Modesty said you'd written a great song?"

Severus nods. "Well, a song, at any rate."

He's not sure he'd say it was great.

"So are you going to play it for us or not?" Gil asks. 

There's a challenge in the tone, and Severus nearly refuses, but it's kind of point of his being here. He sits down in the nearest chair and takes his guitar from its case.

"Your guitar is _pink_?" Gil asks.

"No, it's more of a mauve, I'd say," Harmonia says.

"That's a shade of pink, isn't it?" Gil asks.

"Hush," Aspasia hisses. "Let him play." Four pairs of eyes come back to Severus.

He closes his own eyes, thinks of long red hair and a girl spinning around and music from a Muggle radio, and starts to play.

He's halfway through the second chorus when the drums start. Severus's eyes snap open and there's a discordant jangle as his hand jerks across the guitar strings.

"Don't stop," Gil says, and Severus, a bit uncertainly, picks back up where he left off. Harmonia's tambourine comes in next, and then Aspasia's steam organ, and finally Dougal's bagpipes.

They look around at each other when they're done. And then Dougal says, "Let's try it again, maybe a little bit faster."

"And muffle those pipes a bit, would you?" Aspasia says. "I couldn't hear Severus at all once you started playing."

They play through "Lilah" again, and then again. People make suggestions, propose changes, they agree or disagree, debate things, try them, reject them, and then try them again but not in the same ways. 

At some point, it starts to sound like a real song, and for the first time, Severus can hear that, yes, it's great. 

They're deep in a discussion about Harmonia's tambourine and the balance with the drums when Modesty comes back into the room. "Right, you guys, time to go home. But you can come back tomorrow, if you want."

"See you all then," Gil says, and just like that, it's decided, and they're a band.

"That didn't feel like an hour," Severus says to Modesty as she locks the door to the record shop. 

Modesty laughs. "That's because it wasn't. It was three."

"Three what?"

"Hours. Three hours. The first two times I came down, you all didn't even notice me. That's good," she says, before he can decide if he'd meant to apologize. "Means I put you together well. Now we just see where you take each other. And you, Severus Snape, had better get writing. You can't make it on one song, no matter how good it is. Or rather, if you can make it, you can't stay made."

**August – December 1986**

The days quickly fall into a pattern. When Modesty is working, he hangs out at Kneedel and Toneahrm. He listens to records, listens to conversations, watches to see what people buy and what they don't. Once, he tries going in when she's not working there, but the other sales staff don't seem to appreciate having an ex-Death Eater non-customer loitering in the store. He doesn’t try it again.

In the evenings, he meets with his band, usually in the studio space under the record store, sometimes at Harmonia's house. Modesty looks in on them sometimes at the one, Harmonia's small daughter, Luna, is their audience at the other. Dougal slowly fades into the background, as Severus becomes more and more the leader of things, but that's not much of a surprise to anyone but Severus. Gil and Aspasia pack and unpack their drum kit and steam organ from cases that should be too small, but that's magic. Harmonia throws her tambourine into the air, turns a summersault, and catches it, all while it keeps perfect time, but that's Harmonia. 

The rest of the time, Severus writes. It's easier than he thought it would be. The songs don't have to be perfect, because he can get help from the rest of the band when the tune isn't quite right or he can't finish a line. And there's no lack of inspiration; he finds that he has a lot to say to and about Lily, now that he's letting himself. Things she should have listened to years ago, about him and about her and all her choices, made and unmade.

The danger, of course, is in saying too much, in being too open about her. He knows he should do things like change the line in "Lilah" about her flame-colored hair, but he can't quite make himself do it. Lily _had_ flame-colored hair, and to make it fair or dark would be untrue in a way that changing the name is not.

He ignores the risk, though, and takes a half-dozen songs about Lily to the band, until Dougal shakes his head a bit and says, "Whoever she is, she must be amazing, this woman you keep writing about."

Severus shrugs and asks Gil something about drums, and doesn't say anything else.

But after that, he goes looking for other words, for other topics, for songs about anything but Lily. He experiments with setting some old poems to music, which Harmonia likes and Modesty deems deadly dull.

**24 - 29 December 1986**

Severus dutifully Apparates back to Cokeworth for Christmas, as he does every year. His mother, as far as he can tell, is no happier without her husband than she was with him. He says nothing to her about the band he's been playing with for almost four months. He doesn't say much to her at all.

He takes a long walk on Christmas afternoon, with his collar turned up against the wind. He goes down to the old playground, which is deserted and clearly the victim of recent vandalism. He checks to make sure there are no Muggles watching, and then repairs the snapped chains on the swings, the broken seesaw. He stands there for a long time, trying to decide what he thought he was going to find here, before deciding it hardly matters. Repaired or not, the swings are not going to summon the laughing girl who'd thrown herself from them all those years before.

Whatever he's looking for is gone.

Or it was never there to begin with.

And if there was no point in going to the playground, there's certainly no point in what he does next, walking down to what used to be the Evans family's house. They don't live there now, of course. Except for Lily's miserable Muggle of a sister, they don't live anywhere. But the house is still there, blazing with Christmas lights. 

No, whatever he's looking for, it's not here.

Severus walks back to Spinner's End, where his mother is waiting to scold him for being gone so long. Dinner is cold, dry, and flavorless. They eat in silence.

He supposes it's better than shouting.

He leaves after breakfast the next morning, returning to his dismal flat in Knockturn Alley with a feeling that can only be called relief.

He spends the rest of the day writing a song he calls "Boxing Day." It's reckless, he supposes, but it's satisfying in a way writing tunes for other people's poetry never can be.

"Back to your flame-haired Lilah, then, are you?" Dougal asks when Severus plays it for them at their one rehearsal between Christmas and New Year's. Modesty, who has come down to listen, tells him it's some of his best work yet and that she hopes this means he's done with moldering verse.

Gil has a look on his face that Severus isn't entirely comfortable with, like he's trying to work out a puzzle or remember something he's forgotten. "Boxing Day" suddenly seems truly reckless. Gil was in Lily's house, after all, and only a year behind them. He certainly remembers the ginger-haired Head Girl who died when the Dark Lord was defeated. Severus resolves again to stop writing about Lily, or at least to stop being so incredibly obvious about it.

"Severus?" Aspasia says that evening, as he's packing up his guitar. The others have gone, and they're alone in the studio room. "I have something for you."

She holds out a flat box, rather like the ones he used to buy green and silver striped ties in. It's not wrapped, there's no bow, but it still makes him flush and stammer something about not having anything for her.

"It's not really a present," she says, almost too quickly. "Just something I thought you might be able to use."

Severus opens the box to find a long, deep blue quill. "It's a composer's quill," Aspasia says. "It'll write down any notes you play. I know you don't read music, but I thought it might help the rest of us learn your songs."

"Thank you. It should be very helpful."

"You're welcome," Aspasia says, smiling. "So, um, I guess I'll see you next year."

"Yes," Severus says. "Happy New Year."

Aspasia picks up her organ case, smiles at him again, and heads upstairs.

"Bad idea," Modesty says, appearing in the doorway just after Aspasia has left.

Severus looks up from packing the quill in his guitar case. "What's a bad idea?"

"Don't let Aspasia fall for you," Modesty says. "This band isn't ready for that kind of drama."

Severus almost laughs. "I don't think you need to worry about that."

"Yeah? Why's that?"

"Girls don't fall for me."

For nearly twenty-seven years, he's proven all but impossible to fall for. 

"Give them time," Modesty says. And with that, she leaves him.

 

**31 December 1986 – 1 January 1987**

 

Severus spends the last day of 1986 quietly. He tries out the new quill, watching it dash across sheets of parchment, recording notes as he plays. He can't tell if they're right, but there's a certain amount of pride in looking at music that he wrote.

As far as the songs themselves, nothing really comes together, though that is perhaps because he's distracted by watching the quill. There are one or two phrases he thinks he might be able to turn into something later, but that's all.

Modesty knocks on his door at about half ten on New Year's Eve. She's brought a bottle of firewhisky and her wireless.

"Can't ring in 1987 alone," she says, and it doesn't occur to Severus until later that that might have been as much confession as admonition. 

"To 1987," she says, handing him a glass.

"To 1987," Severus repeats, considering the contents of the glass.

He has never been one for much drinking. When you're lying to one of the world's most powerful wizards, after all, engaging in any activity that makes it more difficult for you to do so is not merely stupid but suicidal.

But, then, the Dark Lord is gone, and he's not lying to anyone any more, is he?

For a while, they just sit in the floor, listening to the music pouring out of Modesty's wireless, passing the bottle back and forth. The announcer on the WWN plays through the most popular songs of 1986. 

"That'll be you someday," Modesty says. "Hell, who knows, maybe even next year."

Severus sets aside his fourth – or fifth – glass of firewhisky to focus on her. "Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?"

"All of this. Why do you care what happens to me? Do you understand what I've done?"

"Of course," Modesty says. "I'm an American, not an idiot. You were a Death Eater. I know."

"I don't think you do," he says, his eyes still focused on her face.

Modesty sighs and sets her own glass aside. "I did my homework, Severus Snape. I know that the odds are very good that you've hurt and tortured people, and almost as good that you've killed them. At the very least, you stood by while other people did. How am I doing so far?"

Severus can't find his voice, so he merely nods, and drops his gaze to the floor.

"Now," Modesty continues, "you're not in that prison with the funny name because you were a spy. No, you _became_ a spy, which means you started out committed to the cause. You're not stupid, so I doubt very much that you went into it thinking it was going to be all tea and cake only to get a very ugly shock. Which means something changed your mind. I'd lay dollars to donuts – no, wait, you probably don't say that over here, do you? Pounds to pasties? Gateaux to galleons? Anyway, if I had to guess, I'd say it's this girl you can't stop writing about."

Severus feels rather like he did the first time he saw Lily with Potter; like someone has filleted his heart, shown it to him, put it back in his chest, and now expects him to carry on somehow.

"Too close to home?" Modesty asks, after a moment. "Sorry. But you did ask."

Severus picks his glass back up, drains what's left in it, and refills it. "And you didn't answer. You know who I am, and you know what I've done." And while he's not about to confirm it, she even knows some of _why_. "But you never said why you care what I do now."

Modesty takes the bottle back from him to refill her own glass. "Maybe I believe in second chances."

"No, I don't think you do," Severus says, and she laughs.

"All right, then," she says. "Maybe I just don't care what you did. You're talented. You could go places, and I want to go along for the ride."

"So I'm nothing but a means to an end for you?" he asks, finally looking up at her again.

She meets his stare with surprisingly clear grey eyes. "More or less. Does that bother you?"

"No. Not at all. That's all you are for me."

"Good," Modesty says. "Then we know where we stand."

"Yes," Severus says. "Means to an end."

And then he leans forward and kisses her.

It starts well, or so he thinks. Her lips part readily enough and one of her hands comes to rest on his shoulder. After a few seconds, though, she breaks away, turning her head and pushing him back.

"No," she says. "No, if Aspasia is a bad idea, then I'm a _very_ bad one. I should go," she continues, standing before he can object or, indeed, say anything at all. "I'll see you next week. Happy New Year, Severus Snape." 

He sits in the floor for a long time after she goes, staring at the door. Then he gets up, pours what little is left in the firewhisky bottle down the drain, and falls into bed.

He spends New Year's Day waiting for the headache to recede and writing. The latter, he is sure, is not helping with the former, but the song won't leave him alone. He knows, even as he's watching the composer's quill dash across the parchment, that it's good, easily one of the best songs he has written.

It's also so obviously about Modesty that he can't see himself playing it anywhere she could hear it. He doesn't want her to know that he cared enough to write about her.

In the end, he puts "Bad Idea" away and resolves to go back to his usual policy of not drinking anything stronger than butterbeer.

**January 1987**

He doesn't see Modesty again until the fourth, when he arrives almost late for practice at Kneedel and Toneahrm. She tries to say something, but he moves past her with some line about not wanting to keep his band waiting.

Because by the fourth, he is stone-cold sober and seriously angry. It's an old song, and he's heard it sung before: "Severus, we shouldn't; Severus, it's not a good idea; Severus, I like you but not like that; Severus, it will make everything too complicated." 

Lily sang that tune better than Modesty ever could, and he has no intention of dancing to it again.

"You played really well today," Aspasia says, two hours later. She has, once again, hung back after the others have left. 

"Thank you," Severus says. "You also played very well. As always."

It’s the simple truth; Aspasia plays very well. But now she shrugs, coloring a little, and pushes her brilliantly blue hair back behind her ear. "Thank you."

For the first time, he wonders if Aspasia actually does fancy him. Modesty certainly seemed to think she did, after all.

And that's another thing. Who does Modesty think she is, rejecting him _and_ telling him who not to spend time with? Why should he care what Modesty thinks, anyway? He's just a means to an end for her, isn't he?

"Thank you again for the quill," Severus says. 

"Oh, did you use it? Does it work?"

"It seems to. Of course, I'm no judge of its accuracy."

"I could help you test it sometime," Aspasia says, readily. 

"I'd appreciate that," Severus says. Aspasia smiles and oh, yes, he may not have a great deal of experience talking to girls (and even less talking to girls who fancy him), but there's no missing the interest in that smile.

"In fact," Severus continues, "perhaps you could help me learn to read music myself."

"I'd be happy to," Aspasia says. "I think you'd – "

"Sorry to interrupt," Modesty says from the doorway, sounding even less sorry than Lucius Malfoy does when using a similar turn of phrase, "but I need to close up."

Aspasia rolls her eyes, but picks up her organ case and heads up the stairs without further protest.

Modesty looks significantly after her. "Bad idea," she says to Severus, before waving her wand to extinguish the lights in the room. " _Nox_."

And maybe it is a bad idea, but Severus hardly has a clean record at resisting those.

He kisses Aspasia for the first time five days later, on his twenty-seventh birthday.

Three weeks after that, he spends the night with her on what should have been Lily's twenty-seventh birthday. He doesn't bother to lie to himself and pretend that's just a coincidence.

Modesty doesn't say anything else about it, and the rest of the band don't seem to think anything of it. Nothing much changes at all. Aspasia has always been the member the most likely to agree with him, just as Gil has always been the least likely. He goes on writing, and Aspasia or no, he's still writing more about Lily than anything else, though he gets better at obscuring that fact. 

**February 1987**

The band has a fortnight-long debate when Modesty tells them to pick a name, as she has arranged their first gig for late February. Severus rejects anything with his name in it out of hand. Harmonia's suggestions are fantastical and unusable. Dougal's are boring and even more unusable. Aspasia offers no suggestions of her own, but has plenty of commentary on everyone else's. Gil dislikes anything he considers too "Dark," but Modesty reminds them that they are trading on Severus's reputation, and they might as well own up to it.

On the other hand, no one is going to buy a record by the Unforgivable Curses. 

Finally, three days before the show, an exasperated Modesty tells them they're not leaving until they settle on a name, _any_ name.

"Why don't you name us?" Aspasia asks. "You're the expert, right?"

"I'm not in the band."

"So you don't have any ideas, either," Aspasia says. "We might as well ask Luna." She gestures to Harmonia's daughter, who Harmonia now brings to rehearsal as often as she doesn't.

Luna looks up from a drawing she is doing that appears to be of the band, if they were hippogriffs, and regards them with her large, pale eyes.

"What do you think we should name the band, Luna?" Harmonia asks in the silence that follows.

"Nox," Luna says, like it's the most obvious answer she'll ever be called on to give, and goes back to her drawing.

"Nox," Modesty repeats. "I like it. It's dark without being, you know, _Dark_ , it suits your sound, it's short, it's memorable, it works. Any objections? No? Good. Nox it is." She steps aside to clear the way to the door. "Okay, you can go." As the members of the band that has just been dubbed Nox start to leave, Modesty adds, "Except you, Severus Snape. I need a moment." Aspasia stops walking. "In private."

Aspasia looks at Severus and waits until he has nodded before she leaves. Modesty watches her go with an expression that's about equal parts amusement and disdain. Then she walks into the room, sits down on one of the chairs along the wall, and studies Severus for a moment.

"I should have asked this weeks ago," she says, finally, "but . . . first show. Do you think you're ready?"

"Of course," he says, dismissively.

"There's no 'of course' here. You've never done this before."

"The music is – "

"I'm not worried about the music," Modesty says. "If the music wasn't ready, I wouldn't have booked the gig. I'm talking about _you_. You've never performed in front of an audience before, and you're the leader. You're going to have to, well, lead. You have to give the performance people are expecting from the lead singer and guitarist."

"I lied to one of the most powerful wizards of all time, to his face, and lived to tell the tale. I think I can handle singing for a handful of witches and wizards in a pub in Cardiff."

"This is not as easy as you think it is," Modesty says. "I just want to make sure that – "

"I can handle it."

"All right," Modesty says, standing again. "At least it's only Cardiff."

**February 1987**

That first show is a disaster. Oh, the music is good, and the band is fine, but the _show_ is a disaster. 

"We just never found our groove," Dougal says, afterwards. He's very politely not putting the blame where they all know it lies, with Severus. He hadn't had any idea how to present himself or them, how to engage the audience, how to keep the show moving along.

"It's only Cardiff," Modesty says the next morning when Severus arrives at the shop. "Don't beat yourself up. And clear your schedule. For the next two weeks, you're with me. I'm going to do what I should have done in the first place."

"And what's that?" Severus asks.

"Make you do your homework. Seriously, clear your schedule, Severus Snape. Evenings and weekends for the next two weeks are mine."

**Spring – Winter 1987**

Modesty proceeds, over the course of a fortnight, to drag Severus to concerts across the length and breadth of Britain, with exactly one instruction: "Watch and learn."

The bands are all Muggles. They go to tiny pubs with tinier stages, they go to stadiums packed with thousands of people, and everything in between. If Modesty needs tickets, she simply Confunds some Muggle into handing his over. She's remarkably good at picking people with good seats.

After each concert, she asks him what he liked, what he noticed, what he remembered. Severus begins piecing together a public persona for himself, a person to be on stage. It's not all that different, he decides, from Hogwarts, or being a loyal – and then disloyal – Death Eater. It's not even that different from being Lily's best friend, and only ever her best friend. He just hides whatever doesn't fit, and shows people what they want or need or are willing to see. 

He likes some of the music a great deal, but Modesty shakes her head when he proposes actually using one of the songs they hear. "You record Muggle music," she says, "and at best you're a novelty act, at worst you're a joke. I don't have either in mind for you."

"Why, then, have you brought me to all Muggle concerts?"

"Well, one, there are a lot more of them, and two, this wasn't something I wanted you to run into your old classmates while doing. Just listen and learn."

So he does. And he writes reams of music, playing each morning with the ideas he heard the night before. (Being _inspired_ by Muggle music, Modesty allows, is fine.) Some of the songs are good, some are just experiments with a particular style that ultimately doesn't suit him or Nox.

At the end of the fortnight of concerts with Modesty, he goes back to the band with a stack of new material and a much clearer idea of what he wants to do and how.

Their second show, three weeks later in Hogsmeade, is a vast improvement on the first.

By summer, Nox has a following. People are actually going out of their way to hear the band play. Severus begins to recognize faces that crowd up close to the stage, wearing t-shirts that are the same shade of mauve as Severus' guitar, emblazoned with the band's newly designed logo. They learn the words, they sing along, they yell out requests.

By fall, there's an album. People are buying it, though Severus has to take Modesty's word for that. His days of being able to hang around Kneedel and Toneahrm, watching the customers, are rapidly coming to an end. It's impossible to listen to the WWN for more than twenty minutes without hearing "Lilah." He receives a congratulatory letter from Slughorn, bright and smug and currying.

By winter, the graffiti has begun to appear, first in Knockturn Alley and then all around Wizarding Britain: SNAPE IS MERLIN.

For the first time in his life, Severus is popular. People want him around. They _admire_ him. They envy him. They cater to him. The same people who wouldn't meet his eye in the street a year ago seek him out. The fools fall for the persona he projects, and forget about the man projecting it, and he doesn't actually have a problem with that.

He comes home one evening to find a half dozen people waiting at the door to his building. He has his wand out instantly; that's generally not the sort of thing you want to see in Knockturn Alley.

"It's _him_ ," one of them squeals, and he very nearly hexes her before he realizes that the party is entirely made up of witches who don't look old enough to have left Hogwarts yet. They're all wearing Nox t-shirts. One of them holds out a small brown book and a quill and rather breathlessly asks, "Mr. Snape, may we have your autograph?"

It's the first time, but not the last. It takes Modesty's intervention to extricate him from a knot of particularly determined fans one afternoon. 

"Well," she says, once they're back in his flat and the door is closed, "it was time for you to move, anyway." She's eyeing the damage one of them did to her hair with a frizzing hex.

"Take care of it, would you?" he says.

_Take care of it_ is rapidly becoming his response to any problem he doesn't want to bother with himself. Sometimes Modesty grumbles, but she also takes care of whatever it is. In this case, though she objects that she knows almost nothing about where to live in England, she finds him a perfectly serviceable house outside York in three days. It's light and airy, unlike any place he's ever lived before. And there's a large room on the ground floor that the band can use to rehearse.

He misses almost nothing about his cramped, dismal Knockturn Alley flat, except the slight protection it afforded him from Aspasia. Now that he has a proper house, she seems to think that he wants her in it.

He doesn't. The truth of the matter is that while he doesn't dislike Aspasia, he doesn't really like her all that much, either. She isn't the person he dreams about, even when she's the one sleeping next to him. She wasn't ever going to be someone he gave serious consideration to, or planned a future with. She was just . . . convenient. 

Frankly, these days there are a lot of other girls who are convenient, just as attractive, and who come without the Gordian knot of emotional strings attached to Aspasia. He doesn't flaunt these "conveniences," but he doesn't take any great pains to hide them from her, either.

Instead of taking the hint, though, Aspasia just keeps trying to worm her way further into his life.

"Sev?" she says one morning, after a night when he couldn't be bothered to think up a reason she shouldn't come over.

"Don't call me 'Sev.'" There's only been one person who has ever called him that – there's only been one person who has ever been _allowed_ to call him that – and Aspasia doesn't come close to being her. 

"Why don't you ever write a song about me?" Aspasia asks. 

"Hmmmm," Severus says, rather than telling her that he has written two: "What You Won't See" and "You're Not Her." Severus thinks they both have potential, but they're clear-eyed and cutting depictions of Aspasia, cruel and unmistakable about their subject. He doubts they're what she's hoping for. 

"I wish you would," Aspasia says.

"Maybe someday," Severus says, getting up and leaving her still lying in his bed.

**9 January 1988**

The situation with Aspasia carries on, neither improving nor worsening, until Severus's twenty-eighth birthday.

"Pretend you're surprised," Modesty whispers, when Harmonia arrives at rehearsal that day with a cake for him.

"That probably will not be difficult," Severus says, as Harmonia tends to make cakes flavored with things like curry and sausages.

"Licorice and dirigible plum," Harmonia says, holding the cake out to Severus. "Luna helped."

"Please thank her for me," Severus says, reflecting that it could have been much worse; a month earlier, Dougal got a cake flavored with haggis and marmalade. 

"None for me, thanks," Dougal says, and Severus suspects he remembers that cake. "Trying to watch what I eat."

"I'll have some," Gil says.

Harmonia is cutting needlessly generous slices for all of them when the door swings open and the final member of Nox comes breezing into the room.

"Sorry I'm late," Aspasia all but sings, not sounding very sorry at all. "I got held up at the salon. Happy Birthday. What's the cake, then?"

Severus looks up from his plate to the woman who is nominally his girlfriend, and a second later his slice of licorice-and-dirigible-plum birthday cake lands at his feet with a wet plop.

Aspasia's hair, which has been blue as long as Severus has known her, is now a garish and unnaturally deep red. Severus doesn't have to pretend to be surprised – he's stunned. 

And then he's angry.

"Don't you like it?" Aspasia says, when the silence has gone on too long. "I thought – "

"I know what you thought," Severus says. "It doesn't suit you at all."

Though, truthfully, it does. It is, after all, her attempt to cast herself as the woman he actually wants.

It's also a mockery.

It's an insult to Lily's memory.

Everything he has ever done with Aspasia has been an insult to Lily's memory.

Severus sets down his empty plate and walks out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

He leans against the wall in the hallway, eyes closed, willing his pulse to slow back to something like normal, trying not to remember his father's saying something like that to his mother, the one time she dared to change her hairstyle.

He can hear the rise of voices from the rehearsal room, though he can't make out what anyone is saying. He doesn't even look over when he hears the door open and then quietly close again.

"Sent you to clean up her mess, has she?" he asks, without looking over, knowing it's Modesty even before she speaks.

"You all right?" Modesty asks, in that concerned American way she has where she actually expects an answer about how he's feeling.

"I want her gone," Severus says. "Take care of it."

"No," Modesty says.

He waits for the usual grumbling and objections, insincere and easily dismissed, so he can tell her that he appreciates everything she does, and she can sigh and agree to do whatever it is he wants. But that's all she says. Just _no_.

"'No'?" he asks.

"I'm not going to break up with your girlfriend for you."

"Fine," Severus says. "Then just fire her. I don't want her in the band, either."

"Sending me to clean up _your_ mess?"

"If you say 'I told you so,' I will curse you into next month."

"Any other day, and I'd like to see you try," Modesty says. "But I would prefer not to embarrass you on your birthday. At least not any more than you have already embarrassed yourself. And I _did_ tell you Aspasia was a bad idea."

Severus's fingers close around his wand before he stops and considers her. He has no idea if she's bluffing or not – he's never had any reason to see Modesty use any advanced defensive, or offensive, magic. She's been perfectly competent at the spells he has seen her use. Maybe she really is that skilled a witch. And even if she's not, cursing her is probably about the worst move he can make here.

Instead, he waits her out. Modesty doesn't like silences, and left in one, she will speak to fill it. 

She sighs. "I'll do it this once. _Once_. Call it a birthday present. And because you have no idea how to handle this. So for _her_ sake, I'll do it. But you have to do me a favor in return."

"Oh? And what's that?"

"Don't screw any more members of your band."

**February – July 1988**

Aspasia's scathing, tell-all interview – given to Rita Skeeter, naturally – appears in _Witch Weekly_ in early February. Severus finds it to be about half-true, at best, but even allowing for hyperbole, he doesn't come off especially well. Not that he expected to. Modesty wouldn't tell him much about her last meeting with Aspasia, beyond saying that it was "taken care of. Oh, and Aspasia says to tell you that you're a knob. I'm only about seventy percent clear on what that means, but I think I agree with her." 

He expects Modesty to be upset about the interview, but she seems more or less wholly unconcerned. "I've never exactly been marketing you as a paragon of good behavior, remember? Get back to work."

A few days later, Modesty brings a woman named Lorelei Trill to audition for Nox. She's older than Severus, with a plain, slightly horsey face and stringy blond hair. Severus wonders if Modesty has deliberately picked someone she thinks he's unlikely to find attractive. If so, she has achieved this goal admirably.

Lorelei is an excellent harpsichordist, though. She fits in well with the other members of Nox, and has an easy-going and cheerful disposition. Severus isn't surprised to learn she was a Hufflepuff.

Through the spring, it appears that Aspasia's departure has caused no more than a brief ripple. They rehearse and play a few small shows, experimenting with the way the harpsichord changes their sound. Severus decides he likes it better than Aspasia's steam organ, and he doesn't think that's just because of his much diminished opinion of Aspasia. It's subtler, less fairground jollity. 

In July, Modesty starts booking larger venues, and suggests that they get to work on the next album. Severus brings in the songs he wrote about Aspasia back in their days of being semi-together.

He's halfway through playing "What You Won't See" for them when Gil stops him. 

"Really, Severus, don't you think you've humiliated the poor girl enough?" he asks.

The room gets very quiet.

It's Modesty who is left to rush into the silence. "Gil, nothing's decided yet for the album. We're just trying things out tod—" 

"No," Gil says. "No, Modesty, all of you," he says, with a gesture that neatly omits Severus, "I'm sorry. You're wonderful, talented people, and it's been a privilege working with you, but this isn't what I want. So, thank you, for everything, but I'm done. I'm out. Keep the drums. I'll never get that damned mauve off."

He walks out of the room before anyone can stop him.

Modesty stands to follow him, but Severus holds a hand up to her. "Don't bother. If he wants to go, let him go."

What else can be expected from a Gryffindor, after all? Severus has never known one who could handle not being the one in the spotlight.

"We can find a new drummer," he adds.

"Have it your way," Modesty says, and sits back down.

Dougal and Lorelei exchange glances and retreat to the corner to talk, in hurried whispers, about something. 

Harmonia says mildly, "I thought you used metaphor very effectively in that song, Severus."

"Thank you," he says, but his eyes are on Dougal and Lorelei.

So, he notices, are Modesty's.

Dougal and Lorelei seem to come to some kind of agreement, because he nods, and then she nods, and then he turns back to the room.

"We weren't going to do this yet, but I think it might be time. Lorelei and I have been talking about maybe striking out on our own. Pursuing a different style of music. This really isn't the right scene for us."

He holds his hand out to Severus. "It's nothing personal, just not the professional direction we want to head in anymore. No hard feelings?"

Severus hesitates for a moment, because no matter what Dougal says, it _feels_ personal, especially coming right on the heels of Gil's departure. But, fine. If that's what Dougal wants, fine. Severus accepts the offered hand. "Good luck to you, then."

Three months later, when he receives the invitation to their wedding, he sends his regrets. And when, three months after that, he receives a copy of the album of folk music they've released, he doesn't even listen to it.

**August – December 1988**

"So we have a few open places in the band," Severus says, a week after the near complete exodus from Nox, in Modesty's Diagon Alley office. 

"What band?" Modesty demands. "You don't have a band any more, you have a tambourine player. And as talented as Harmonia is, a guitar and a tambourine do not a band make."

"Well, what do you suggest, Modesty?"

"Change of plan. Congratulations, Severus Snape, you're now a solo artist. We'll hire back up musicians, and when you drive them away, no one will think anything of their having moved on."

"And what about Harmonia?"

"Harmonia can play tambourine for you if you and she like," Modesty says, as though she doesn't really care one way or the other, which she probably doesn't.

"Now," Modesty continues, sounding briskly American, "we both have a lot of work to do. I have to find some musicians for you, and you need to get writing. We need something absolutely brilliant for your solo debut. I expect you to have the number one single this Christmas. So go come up with something that will impress me. Oh, and not another song about your lost redhead, please." 

Severus walks out of her office without another word, quietly seething. There are days he realizes he doesn't actually like Modesty all that much.

So she wants to be impressed, does she? And on a subject other than Lily? All right, he'll impress her. And if he insults her along the way, well, he'll be curious to see which of those things matters more to her.

Severus walks back into her office the next day, without knocking on the door or greeting her, and drops "Bad Idea" on her desk.

Modesty picks it up, her eyes scanning down the page, and then hands it back to him.

"Play it for me."

Severus sits down in the only other chair in the room and plays it straight through, his eyes never leaving Modesty's face. There's no way she doesn't know what – or _who_ – it's about, but the only reaction he gets is a short nod when he's done. "Yes, I think that will do nicely. We'll need a very good drummer, and some kind of keyboard, I think. Possibly a violin. We can lead with it as a single, and follow it up with the album," she says, making notes on the parchment in front of her. 

"Was there anything else you needed this morning?" she adds, without looking up at him.

"It's a pity you were raised in America," Severus tells her.

"And why is that?"

"You'd have made an excellent addition to Slytherin House."

Modesty looks up from her notes. "Yes, I probably would have. Friday at two, then, to record it. I'll let you know if I can't find suitable musicians before then. Tell Harmonia, would you, if you want her there?" She turns her attention back to the papers on her desk.

"No violin," Severus says, "but I want a cello. See you Friday."

"Bad Idea" is a colossal hit, bigger than anything he did with Nox except "Lilah." (He's privately glad of that fact – he doesn't want Modesty to be better than Lily in any way, not even that one.)

He finds that he likes being on his own. He's just _Severus Snape_ , not _the lead singer of Nox_. There's no dealing with a set sound, no need to work a damned bagpipe into the arrangement of everything he writes. The only constant is Harmonia. The other musicians come in and out as he wants them to.

He likes the professional and personal freedom of it. He doesn't even have to pay lip service to other people's opinions, except Modesty's, and he has to admit that Modesty is right far more often than she's wrong about his career. She has a good ear, for both the music and the market. 

And she's still there to take care of all the things he doesn't feel like dealing with, like the WWN and the _Prophet_ and all the magazines. The album gets glowing reviews, and sells quickly and well. Shows sell out almost faster than Modesty can schedule them. 

"The WWN wants you for their special live show on Halloween," Modesty says, in early September. "The offer's good, I think – "

"I already have plans," Severus says.

"What? No, you don't. I make all your plans, remember? I'd know if you had plans for Halloween."

"I'm not available," he says. "Don't bother asking again."

Modesty rolls her eyes and sighs, and moves on to a report on album sales.

Two months later, she tells him that she has booked a live Christmas Day special for him on the WWN. There's almost a challenge in it, like she's expecting another objection. Severus merely nods. He's happy to perform on Christmas. It gives him an excuse not to go to Spinner's End.

Besides, Christmas doesn't belong to Lily the way Halloween does.

**January – July 1990**

The triumph that is 1989 continues into 1990. Modesty starts talking about making plans to tour America, break into the market there. But first, she says, he needs another album. 

They start recording in early summer, and finish in late July. On the day they finish the last track, Modesty produces a bottle of champagne, which he and she and Harmonia drink while they play it back. Severus doesn't think he's written anything on the level of "Lilah" or "Bad Idea," but the songs are collectively the strongest group he's put together. There's no weak track, no song simply there as filler. Luna dances around the room, though admittedly, she does not appear to be dancing to the music they're listening to.

Severus leaves the house in a good mood, that evening, to meet with a particularly enthusiastic and beautiful "convenience." He gets back late, six hours later, and finds Modesty sitting on his front steps.

He doesn't think she's turned up at his place unannounced since that New Year's Eve, nearly four years earlier. For one brief, wild moment he thinks she's there to lecture him on the company he keeps again, and then he gets a good look at her face.

"What's happened?" Severus asks, as she stands.

"There's been an accident," Modesty says. "Harmonia was experimenting with a spell, and it went really, really wrong."

"How badly is she hurt? Is she at St. Mungo's? What does she need? "

"She's dead. She died instantly. I'm sorry."

Severus stares at her, then sinks down onto the step she was sitting on a moment before.

"Now, the _Prophet_ wants a comment from you. Other people may as well. About Harmonia, and working with her. And I think you should consider dedicating the album to her. There could also be a memorial concert, of course, especially if there is some cause you know she supported, as a bene—"

"You disgust me," Severus says.

"Excuse me?"

"Her body isn't even cold, yet, Modesty, and you want to talk about statements and dedications and benefit concerts."

"This is what I do. I manage your career."

"Yes, you're very good at making a living from other people's talents."

"Careful, there, Severus Snape. I might start thinking you care about someone other than that redheaded ghost of yours. I'll issue a statement on your behalf. And I'll be in touch with the funeral arrangements."

She reaches the edge of the yard and Disapparates before he can collect himself enough to reply.

Severus goes into the house and sits holding his mauve guitar for a while, but for the first time in years, he can't find words or a tune. Finally, he settles for getting gloriously drunk and falling into bed.

Harmonia's funeral is well-attended, though the crowd is a not entirely comfortable mix of the Lovegoods' odd, bohemian friends and people Harmonia knew from the music scene. All the former members of Nox are there, and they all greet each other civilly, even Severus and Aspasia (if only just barely).

Severus tries to hang back, stay on the edges of the throng, but Luna finds him. She takes his hand and drags him around to the other mourners, introducing him as "Mum's friend, Severus, who plays the guitar." It's a relief when it's over, and he decides that he can skip the lunch at the Lovegoods' house afterwards without causing comment or offense.

He is almost to the churchyard gate when someone says, "Severus. A moment?"

There are very few people he'd actually stop for right now, but unfortunately, the speaker is one of them. Severus stops, and turns to face Albus Dumbledore. 

"Walk with me," Dumbledore says, indicating a path that runs around the outer edge of the cemetery. 

They walk in silence for several minutes, until they are far enough from the remaining mourners that they can't be overheard.

"Ten years ago today, Lily's son was born," Dumbledore says.

Severus's eyes narrow. "I trust you understand, Headmaster, why I am not sending the boy a card."

"This time next year," Dumbledore continues, as though Severus has not spoken, "he will be preparing to come to Hogwarts. So it is time, Severus, to keep the promise you made, and help me protect him in the coming years."

"Horace is retiring. I find myself in need of both a Potions master and a head of Slytherin House. I think you will do admirably for both. And this will give you a year to get accustomed to things as a professor, before he arrives."

"And if I've changed my mind?" Severus asks, angry at the Dumbledore's presumption, at his bringing this up here and now, of all places and times.

Dumbledore fixes him with sharp blue eyes, staring through those half-moon spectacles. Severus feels all of thirteen years old again. Even before Dumbledore speaks, Severus feels like he's been deflated. 

"And have you?"

"No."

"Then we shall expect you no later than the fifteenth. Thank you, Severus."

Severus nods, turns on his heel, and stalks out of the churchyard.

**3 August 1990**

"What do you mean, 'you're done'?" Modesty asks, three days later, looking across her office at him like she thinks he's gone mad. "Done with what?"

"All of it," he says. He's standing by the window, looking out over Diagon Alley. He can just see the sign for Kneedel and Toneahrm from here. "I've accepted a position at Hogwarts."

"Hogwarts?" Modesty repeats. "Doing what?"

"Teaching Potions."

"Teaching? And just what the hell qualifies you to teach Potions or anything else? You're a _guitarist_." 

"No, I'm not. I'm a man who used to play the guitar."

"This is insane," Modesty says. "You want to walk away from an amazingly successful music career to teach a bunch of snot-nosed, pimple-faced, hormone-ridden children how to brew potions. Look, I know you're upset about Harmonia, but – "

"This has nothing to do with Harmonia."

Modesty is silent for a moment. "Then it has to do with _her_. The girl you've been singing about all these years." 

Severus turn back from the window but doesn't answer her.

"It's Lily Potter, isn't it?" Modesty asks.

"Don't call her by his name," Severus snaps.

For a moment, the room is so quiet that he can hear the man in the office next door coughing.

"That was a 'yes,' then, I take it," Modesty says. 

Severus stays silent. He won't confirm it. Not even to Modesty.

"This is insane," Modesty says again. "She's dead. It's one thing to use her as some kind of muse, but it's entirely another to throw your whole life away on her. You can't impress her, you can't make her happy, and you certainly can't still win her away from him. All you can do is get over her. The way she obviously got over you."

Severus has his wand out and aimed her in an instant, but the curse is only half-formed in his thoughts when his wand arcs across the office to her hand. 

"I wouldn't," Modesty says quietly, offering it back to him. "You won't win."

Severus takes his wand and turns for the door.

"Don't do this, Severus," she says. It might be the first time she's ever called him by just his first name. "Please."

"Don't worry. I'm sure you'll find someone else whose talents you can live off of."

"And what do you want me to do with the album?"

"Do whatever you like with it. Good-bye, Modesty Moss."

**14 August 1990**

The night before he leaves for Hogwarts, Severus walks into York. He turns down side streets, wandering until he finds the kind of shop he's looking for.

The Muggle shopkeeper looks like she's getting ready to close up, but she's polite enough when Severus sets the guitar case on the counter and says he'd like to sell it.

She opens the case, and her eyes widen a bit. "I've never seen a guitar this color before. Where'd you get it?"

"I found it in my father's flat when he died. I don't play the guitar, so I don't need it."

She lifts it from the case and examines it. Severus knows enough about Muggle money to know that the first offer is insultingly low, that's she's expecting him to come back with one that's ridiculously high, and then they'll haggle to a point in the middle. 

Instead, he simply agrees, thanks her, and walks out of the shop.


End file.
